Thinking and Acting Together

Dear colleagues,Dear customers,

After taking over the management at the end of October 2017, we - Uwe Hartmann as CEO and Stefan Reichert as COO and Benedetto Speroni from July 2018 - decided to align our way of thinking and acting “Together“. “Together“ within the management, “Together“ for the entire organization and “Together“ with the customer.

The definition “Together” is much more complex. This involves common values and respect with and for each other, which exclude competition or unfair cooperation. We solve tasks with and for each other without differentiation of departments and business areas. Last but not least it involves a lasting and long-term cooperation with the customer, which means that a project does not end with the delivery and the assembly at the customer’s factory, but is the beginning of the relationship with the customer. This can be continued endlessly, but what remains is the “Together”.

KELLER is re-structured with 4 strong and equal business areas - Intelligent Ceramic Solutions ICS, Intelligent Machinery Solutions IMS, Intelligent Automation Solutions IAS and Infrared Temperature Solutions ITS. All of them are supported by the SERVICE business area. The significant change is that in addition to the previous heavy clay area the other core competences of KELLER are positioned as separate business areas on the market. Synergies from the heavy clay area are used for the IMS area, which offers highly flexible, machine and robot supported systems for industrial handling and palletizing processes. IAS benefits from the synergies in the same way and created its own market in the automation of bulk material processes for grain mills and compound feed plants.

The SERVICE we consider as essential guarantor for the future of KELLER Creating Solutions. Therefore, the SERVICE was equipped with new products and a new organization to be very close to our customers in a lasting way.

With this step, we as management, react appropriately to the always faster changing conditions of the markets, market segments and target groups. We want to help shape this change, grow with it and continue to successfully serve the global markets with our products.

We align our corporate organization to achieve this target. We are convinced that only a strong and flexible organization is able to react to the challenges of the markets. Therefore, we introduced a flat hierarchy.

KELLER is a German medium-sized company with a history of 125 years. We feel deeply connected with the values and culture of KELLER and its employees. This helps us as a leadership trio - each with his own special strengths. Uwe Hartmann will be responsible for technology and operating businesss, Stefan Reichert will be responsible for finance, legal affairs and operational organization, and sales will be handled by Benedetto Speroni.

Together we will tackle the next challenge of KELLER – Digitization! We think that this is the next and necessary step both in the brick industry as well as in the other divisions. For this we have pushed the product development and support and demand the timely implementation. We will achieve a new and innovative ‘Together’ with the customer within the implementation of a project by the applying most modern IT tools. At the same time we use this for our internal organization to increase efficiency. Moreover, we have developed a digital product, allowing the customer to call up online the actual planta data and by means of which the customer is informed about maintenance. We will consistently continue these and many further steps.